Polygamy (Split from Anti-Muslim Terrorist Attack)

[Belz...]

We all do, quite frequently. It's only ever a question of what subjects you accept it about.

A nice truism but it amounts to little more than a dodge. Would you accept that answer, in this case, by someone else? You know, someone makes a claim, you ask for evidence, and they answer exactly what you answered.

And sometimes it turns out to be right.

Yes, and the only way to tell which is which is with what?

 

[theprestige]

A nice truism but it amounts to little more than a dodge. Would you accept that answer, in this case, by someone else? You know, someone makes a claim, you ask for evidence, and they answer exactly what you answered.







Yes, and the only way to tell which is which is with what?

I guess it depends on what you want, and what you're willing to risk to get it.

How much do you want legalized polygamy? And are you willing to risk women's liberation to get it?

These are not rhetorical questions. I'm asking you straight up what you want and what your arguments are.

 

[Belz...]

Coincidentally, all the societies that are big fans of polygamy are also not big fans of women's rights.

That is your claim, right? It's a coincidence?

Have you read the arguments made about this? Because myself and others have already responded to that, but somehow that's been met with largely silence, or vague answers.

 

[Belz...]

Wouldn't that predict that the vast majority of societies where women lacked rights would be polygamous, rather than that the vast majority of polygamous societies lacked women's rights?

The latter seems to be the actual case, but the former is not (particularly if you look at history). So the correlation seems to go in the direction predicted by Ziggurat's viewpoint and not yours here.

Actually, in order to prove Zig's point you'd have to show that this disregard for female rights began with polyamorous relationships being widely accepted.

 

[Belz...]

How much do you want legalized polygamy? And are you willing to risk women's liberation to get it?

Given that so far no risk has been demonstrated to exist except via a fallacy of association, I would feel quite safe in agreeing to legalising it.

As it stands, however, I don't care either way about it.

 

[theprestige]

Have you read the arguments made about this? Because myself and others have already responded to that, but somehow that's been met with largely silence, or vague answers.

I'm not asking about the arguments. I'm asking about the claim.

 

[Roboramma]

Actually, in order to prove Zig's point you'd have to show that this disregard for female rights began with polyamorous relationships being widely accepted.

Not really. The claim isn't that polygamy is the only cause of oppression of women throughout history, only that it contributes to it.

 

[Ziggurat]

You know I don't see...

"Women should be forced to settle for men they deem as less attractive so those men can have sex and not be disruptive to society"

as being a big hit as a caption on Women's Rights posters.

But somehow "let's copy the marriage arrangements of backwards misogynistic cultures" will be a better slogan.

And nobody is forcing women to settle for any man, not in the US. They are free to stay single. Some of them choose to do exactly that.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Wouldn't that predict that the vast majority of societies where women lacked rights would be polygamous, rather than that the vast majority of polygamous societies lacked women's rights?

The latter seems to be the actual case, but the former is not (particularly if you look at history). So the correlation seems to go in the direction predicted by Ziggurat's viewpoint and not yours here.

Well the vast number of societies were Polygamous, even the early Romans and Greeks.

Athens was one of the first places to introduce pure monogamy after outlawing the inheritance of title to the so called "Bastards" born to concubines of the aristocracy, and so reducing the power of those lines, and thus their threat to the ruler of the time, Solon. This was about 5 BC.

Rome outlawed it in 320 AD long after the introduction of Christianity which preached Monogamy.

ETA: Just an Expansion here. Early Romans were allowed to have just one wife, but also to have slave concubines. This was part of trying to have all citizens as equals in their society, and so by limiting wives they could assure that all roman citizens could find a wife, and mostly came from the Romans having a form of democracy with the Roman Senate. The total ban in 320 AD was on the keeping of Slave Concubines, by which time the Christian Church was preaching monogamy, though the debate over whether the Church was influence in this by the Roman and Greece customs or whether the Church reinforced the Roman and Greek customs is an unknown at this point.

Other societies have really only banned it as recently as last century.

Do we have data from hunter-gatherer societies on this? My understanding is that they are much more egalitarian than settled societies, so could offer a test for how things would go in an egalitarian setting.

Most Hunter Gather societies, and then agricultural societies even more so, seem to have had a leaning towards polygamy, with it not being until the introduction of agrarianism that such relationships started to decline.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Not really. The claim isn't that polygamy is the only cause of oppression of women throughout history, only that it contributes to it.

Interestingly most of the studies on this subject actually suggest that far from being an oppression of woman, polygamy is actually beneficial to women, especially in societies where there is a large resource difference between men.

It is more advantageous for a woman to share the resources of a resource rich man, that to have monopoly over the resources of a resource poor one.

So polygamy in and of itself in not actually oppressive to women. What is oppressive is treating them as goods or chattels rather than human beings with the right to self determination.

ETA: This is purely an answer to your statement it is not my advocating for a one man and many women harem type of polgamy, in fact I believe that such groups would be exceedingly rare if polygamy was allow. In fact I think that polyamorous marriages would be rare in our societies, with monogamous marriages and relationships still representing 95%+ of all marriages. I don't believe that there is any evidence that should it be allowed that suddenly every man and his dog will start trying to build their own personal Harems.

 

[PhantomWolf]

But somehow "let's copy the marriage arrangements of backwards misogynistic cultures" will be a better slogan.

Nice strawman there.

And nobody is forcing women to settle for any man, not in the US. They are free to stay single. Some of them choose to do exactly that.

Which is still taking their right to have the choice of partner they want, and who wants them, away from them.

 

[Arcade22]

The only reason that is needed is that it is a violation of people's rights. This is the exact same argument that won the cases of Gay Marriage.

And what specific right(s) would that be?

Generally speaking it's not illegal to be in "homosexual relationships". Sodomy is usually illegal and marriages between people of the same sex are not legally recognized as valid, but at least where i live there's nothing illegal about being in sexual relationships with people of the same sex.

Your attempt to equate polygamy with homosexual relationships comes off as incoherent. Sodomy isn't equivalent to, or even slight similar, to bigamy.

You do realise that this is not the general form that polyamerous relations take right? You also realise that in a proper polyamerous relationships that all partners have to agree to the introduction of a new member?

So what?

The fact is that in a society where men and women have equal rights, the highlighted straw would simple not exist.

Because multiple women (or men for that manner) would never ever allow themselves to serve as sexual partners with a lone individual?

Besides, the fact that you try to dismiss this type of sexual relationship as a "straw" makes it seem like you are excluding perfectly legal sexual relationship from being warranted the same kind of legal recognition that your ideal "polyamerous relationships" are justified in having.

And as to the legal ways of dealing with dissolving a party of the marriage, dealing with kids and so forth, we already have those rules set up, we just have to change the math a bit.

Just with X number of times the heartbreak, disputes and acrimony.

Pragmatically speaking it seems to me that it would be better to make such relationships more socially acceptable, which is being done right now, rather than legally recognizing same sex marriage in an attempt to make same sex relationships more socially acceptable.

You do realize that this is what actually happened, right? Gay marriage was legalized after sufficient social acceptance of same-sex relationships had been established.

 

[PhantomWolf]

And what specific right(s) would that be?

The right to marriage to the person they wish to marry.

https://www.humanrights.com/what-are-human-rights/videos/marriage-and-family.html

Your attempt to equate polygamy with homosexual relationships comes off as incoherent. Sodomy isn't equivalent to, or even slight similar, to bigamy.

If you think that the argument was incoherent, you need to talk to the person that posted the initial one I used.

So what?

So that formation of polyamorous marriages where all participants are in agreement as to a new member would be very different to those that you and others are using to try and say it's a bad idea.

Because multiple women (or men for that manner) would never ever allow themselves to serve as sexual partners with a lone individual?

Besides, the fact that you try to dismiss this type of sexual relationship as a "straw" makes it seem like you are excluding perfectly legal sexual relationship from being warranted the same kind of legal recognition that your ideal "polyamerous relationships" are justified in having.

I'm not dismissing it to exclude it, I am dismissing it because it would be so rare as to not exist, and yet you and others seem to want to focus on that and only that. A "Harem" type of relationship occurs when the primary spouse is extremely resource rich, but when several of the harem spouses are added, those resources must then be split between them. This means that very quickly, even multi-billionaires become less attractive options than the lesser billionaires about them, and then the millionaires and so on. It's simply a numbers game and spreading the resources too thin in trying to build such a group.

Having said that, if there actually are people that want to genuinely live in that sort of group, then why should you or I tell them that they can't, and that their relationships should not be allowed to be recognised?

Just with X number of times the heartbreak, disputes and acrimony.

a poor argument, and one that good law can solve in 99% of cases.

You do realize that this is what actually happened, right? Gay marriage was legalized after sufficient social acceptance of same-sex relationships had been established.

Actually Gay Marriage was legalised by people fighting for it. It was supported by less than 50% the population when legalised in most countries, and is still illegal in others, and in those countries it was legalised in it has seen a dramatic boost in acceptance now that it has been.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

Multi-marriages are a whole different ball of wax from same-sex, for much the same reasons same-sex couples wanted to be able to marry. Spouses are considered by the law to be kinda the same person, specifically a spouse may not be legally forced to testify against the other spouse. Spouses also have more weight in end-of-life scenarios.

Suppose a wife has been gravely injured and is on life support. One husband wants to pull the plug, the other wants to keep her alive as long as possible and give her a chance to recover. Who wins? If she dies, can her husband of twenty years claim a greater share of her assets (you know, the ones not already in everyone's name) than the husband of five years? Do the surviving members have to remain married, or are they forced to separate or remarry each other? There's so many questions for a multimarriage that simply don't come up in a pair marriage.

 

[Ziggurat]

Nice strawman there.

No more of one than you presented.

Which is still taking their right to have the choice of partner they want, and who wants them, away from them.

They can pick whomever they want. Why does that entitle them to state recognition and support?

 

[Darat]

I guess it depends on what you want, and what you're willing to risk to get it.

How much do you want legalized polygamy? And are you willing to risk women's liberation to get it?

These are not rhetorical questions. I'm asking you straight up what you want and what your arguments are.

Let's take the UK as an example. If we officially recognised poly-marriages how would that (these are examples) remove the right of women to vote, for women to own property in their own right, remove equality legislation (that you aren't - apart from a few exceptions - allowed to discriminate based on sex), overturn a century of legal precedents? I really don't see how that would happen by allowing poly-marriage.

 

[PhantomWolf]

No more of one than you presented.

You mean aside from your being asked if that was what you meant and you agreed that it was?

They can pick whomever they want. Why does that entitle them to state recognition and support?

Then your entire argument falls apart right here. If such relationships are allowed to occur and governments are already treating people who have been loving in a steady relationship as if they are married, then how would Government acknowledgment of polyamorous relationships bring about the destruction of western society as we know it and remove women's rights?

And as to what entitles them to that recognition, the same fundamental right to marry that was affirmed by both the UN in Article 12 of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and by the US Supreme Court in Obergefell vs Hodges (2015)

 

[Belz...]

I'm not asking about the arguments. I'm asking about the claim.

Come on, theprestige. The arguments are made in support of the claim.

Not really. The claim isn't that polygamy is the only cause of oppression of women throughout history, only that it contributes to it.

Right, but though correlation has broadly been established, causation has not.

 

[Roboramma]

Right, but though correlation has broadly been established, causation has not.

Oh, sure, I agree that establishing a correlation isn't enough, and while I can see the logic of the causative idea that he put forth, it hasn't been demonstrated (at least here).

I was only saying that it's not necessary to show that polygamy precedes oppression for the story to be true, because the oppression could have existed for other reasons and then been worsened by polygamy.

 

[Arcade22]

The right to marriage to the person they wish to marry.

https://www.humanrights.com/what-are-human-rights/videos/marriage-and-family.html

You must be joking. In the real world "The right to marriage" is not absolute and it's subject to plenty of restrictions. Whether those restrictions are reasonable or not is one thing, but to suggest that people have a right to polygamous marriages is just laughable. If it weren't someone would already have won in court.

We (usually) permit people to have be in sexual relationships with minors above a certain age but we (usually) don't permit them to get legally married until they are legally considered adults. In fact Sweden recently made the law more strict on this so that the ability to recognize any child marriages is heavily limited, simply because many conservative immigrants insist on having their children married to avoid them having sex outside of marriage. Swedish society views that as an unacceptable interference into the development and sexual autonomy that youth are entitled to.

That's a great example of a well justified exception to "The right to marriage to the person they wish to marry".

If you think that the argument was incoherent, you need to talk to the person that posted the initial one I used.

Why don't you explain why my argument was flawed instead?

So that formation of polyamorous marriages where all participants are in agreement as to a new member would be very different to those that you and others are using to try and say it's a bad idea.

I never mentioned anything about whether "all participants are in agreement" simply because there's no reason to presume that all participants aren't okay with such an relationship. I assumed that everything was consensual and non abusive.

I'm not dismissing it to exclude it, I am dismissing it because it would be so rare as to not exist, and yet you and others seem to want to focus on that and only that.

And what exactly are you basing that on?

Having said that, if there actually are people that want to genuinely live in that sort of group, then why should you or I tell them that they can't, and that their relationships should not be allowed to be recognised?

I never said that they shouldn't be allowed to be in such a relationship. I'm merely questioning whether its reasonable to change the status quo, especially since there's clearly not sufficient public interest and support for polygamous marriage.

Actually Gay Marriage was legalised by people fighting for it.

No it was because the political establishment decided to change the status quo and allow it.

It was supported by less than 50% the population when legalised in most countries, and is still illegal in others, and in those countries it was legalised in it has seen a dramatic boost in acceptance now that it has been.

First of all i never said that gay marriage had to be supported by more than 50% of people for it be permitted, just that there had to be sufficient support (as well as a lack of sufficiently strong opposition). Second, please show the numbers behind this claim.